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Wednesday, March 30, 2016

At EasterCon I picked up a copy of Andromeda SF Magazine #152, a special bilingual edition of the German magazine that was produced for WorldCon and is full of information about the German SF scene. On the cover is a picture Exodus #30, which contained the German translation of my story The Gondolier, which I was excited to see.

I discovered as I read the magazine that this same cover received the 2014 KLP Award for best artwork. This award is the equivalent of the Nebula - voted for by professional in the SF field.

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

I was at EasterCon for just the Sunday this year, and spent the day with my usual combination of browsing the dealer hall, attending a couple of programme items, chatting to other writers and drinking quite a bit of tea.

I didn't pick up as many books as usual, but I did get a copy of Mercurio D. Rivera's short story collection, which I discovered has a quote from one of my reviews on the back cover which was quite a thrill.

I caught up with Mike Wood, C.A.Hawksmoor and Eliza Chan from Codex and had a lengthy chat about our experiences as writers, GOH Aliette de Bodard, Gareth L Powell and Neil Beynon, Ian Whates, Roy Grey. As usual I also saw a few others in passing that I dodn't get to speak to. Next year will be at the NEC apparently.

Sunday, March 20, 2016

I was sitting in my lounge, a book in my hand, reading in the yellow glow of the standard lamp. The book was a hard back, all yellow and red with the face of a steely private eye staring at me from the cover beside the silhouette of a dame with a duffel bag. By now, I knew what was in that bag, having read the first couple of chapters.

Saturday, March 19, 2016

A couple of weeks back I watched ‘The Three Doctors’ again, which was originally aired before I was born, but I’ve seen at some point in the murky past. I like all the ‘Doctor Who’ crossover episodes, so I was keen to see what Paul Cornell has devised for his five-part comic event ‘Four Doctors’.

Sunday, March 06, 2016

My first translated story, Devotion, was published ten years ago in Hebrew in the webzine Bli Panika, edited by Rami Shalheveth. In 2010 a translation of my short story Roadmaker also appeared there. The webzine is still going today, which is quite a feat in itself. I popped over to Israel to meet up with Rami and we chatted about publishing and translations as we wandered through an orchard enjoying succulent oranges. Or maybe we corresponded by email.

Q. How long have you been
publishing Bli Panika, and how did it get started?

A: Bli Panika was established on
October 28th 2000 by the members of the Ort science fiction and
fantasy forum. Its name was a tribute to Douglas Adams "Hitchhiker
Guide" series – "Don't Panic" in Hebrew. At the beginning it was a
"forum magazine", i.e.a platform to publish the forum
users reviews, stories and even inner jokes and fans folklore. Several months later,
after I saw that Hadas, the original editor, didn't find enough time to update
it regularly, I asked to take over Bli Panika and turned it into a more
professional zine. Sadly, the ORT forum is long gone, like most internet
forums, but Bli Panika is still here.

Q. Is there much science
fiction published in Hebrew?

A. The Israeli SF market is
very small and consists primarily of translated fiction, mostly long form and mostly
from English. Nevertheless, each year about 15-30 original books are written in
the genre in Hebrew, mainly YA but also novels published by mainstream
publishers.

Short Israeli fiction is
published at BP, of course, and also at "Hayo Iyeh" (meaning
"Once upon a Future") yearly anthology published by the Israeli
Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy. Several other stories are published at
the ISFSF web magazine, both original and foreign. Both publications are edited
by Ehud Maimon. The only paying market for short fiction is the magazine
"Chalomot Be'Aspamia" (an ancient Hebrew idiom that means "daydreaming",
but its literal meaning is "dreams in Spain". Spain was considered a
very remote place in ancient times J) – a bimonthly print+ebook
magazine edited also by me.

Q. How would you describe
Israeli SF? Is there a defining characteristic?

A. Israeli SF fiction is small.
Very small. There are too few writers and not enough publishers. The short
fiction is very varied and it's quite similar to English written fiction. Same
topics, same genres and ideas.

As I said, long forms Israeli
fiction is mostly YA. Many adult books printed by mainstream publishers tend to
deal with Hebrew myths and demonology, like the Golem, biblical and
Mesopotamian myths etc. There's also a trend for political apocalyptic/dystopic
fiction dealing with the Israeli-Arab conflicts or the inner Israeli conflict
between secular Jews and orthodox Haredi Jews.

Q. Who are some SF authors
writing in Hebrew that we can also read in English?

A. Not many. Most Hebrew
fiction wasn't translated to other languages. There are several Israeli authors who write in English and
publish to the English-reading markets. They include Lavie Tidhar, Guy Hasson
and Ron Friedman (living in Canada). Nir Yaniv translated several of his
stories to English and Vered Tochterman had a short story at F&SF magazine
several years ago.

Q. What are you looking for in
English-language stories that you accept for translation?

A. They got to be good, of
course, with a kind of sense of wonder – enough to make me Wow. I prefer
character-based stories, both SF and fantasy, but not Swords & Sorcery or
horror. If it has many puns, dialects or other "translational
hazards" it will make it harder for me to accept the story, but I won't
avoid the
challenge if I like it enough.

Q. What plans do you have for
this year?

A. I just found a new
translations editor for Bli Panika, so I hope we'll be able to publish more
stories this year. I'm collecting now original stories for an eBook dedicated
for a new Israeli SF film called "Tslila Hofshit" (Free Diving).

Wednesday, March 02, 2016

The next issue of Austrian magazine Visionarium will be out in May, containing the German translation of my Victorian SF adventure novelette The Journey Within. This will be my second story in German and my longest translation yet.